"Gotta love that exchange rate!" -Eurotrip

Cover charge for the Deja Vu Club in Buda: 300 ft (~$1.50)
3 .5 liter Sopronis (Hungarian beers): 1050 ft (~$5.25)
1 modorokrémes palascinta (Nutella crèpe): 165 ft (~$0.85)

That's right, I spent less than $10 last night. And what did I do? Went to the Deja Vu with Leslie, Kristoff and Kelly to see the band Panic Radio. The band was lots of fun and very high energy, even though it was early enough in the night that only a couple of people were really into it. The beer was cheap and tasty, so I drank more than I probably should have and ended up quite happy. After the second band came on, we decided to book and took the tram back to Batthyany (the metro stop right by my house) and went to what has been lovingly dubbed "The Pancake Place", a 24 hour place that sells cheap cheap crèpes, Nagyi Palacsinta. The four of us hung out there for what could have been 20 minutes or it could have been an hour; I'm not sure, I wasn't exactly in the clearest of mindsets. I walked home from there, watched an episode of Futurama on my computer, then passed out. An absolutely fabulous night, indeed!


Yesterday also included a fieldtrip to a very Americanized mall at the end of the red Metro line because I needed blue jeans (I found an absolutely fantastic pair at H&M that was only slightly out of my price range), and then a trip to IKEA because Aaron needed a blanket. This was my first trip to IKEA ever... and here it was, in Hungarian. Definitely an experience to be had.

The next post will be complete with pictures, detailing today's day trip to Szentendre. But for now, I must venture home!

It was a spectacle... I... I mean a miracle

Ladies and gentlemen, the miraculous story of Jessie's disappearing week.

Last Friday (9/15) I had a lovely evening. I met up with friends, they made cookies, we went out to the Pink Cadillac, an American type pizza parlor, and I drew tattoos for 2 or 3 people. The friends were plentiful, the cookies were chocolate chip, the pizza had bacon and corn on it and the tattoos were fantastic (pictures of Voula's and Chris' provided for your enjoyment). A few of us planned to meet up the next morning to visit a winery town 2 and a half hours away by train called Eger.

The next morning dawned quite nicely (as usual) I felt a little funny; my head was a little foggy and my skin felt prickly, but Sarah felt my forehead and declared me fine, so I decided to tough it out. I told Éva I was going to Eger and she packed me a lunch and gave me a 1000 ft bill and asked me to pick her up a bottle of Egribor (Eger wine). We met at the Keleti metro stop at 9 to take a 10 o'clock train from Keleti. Or so we thought. This trip had been the brainchild of Eva, but when I called her to double check our meeting place, she told me she'd been up with a high fever the night before and that she wouldn't be coming with us. So it ended up being me, Voula, Mihály, Amol, Barry, Mandy, Mad.

It turned out that the train was more expensive than we thought it would be (still not that expensive... the round trip was less than $30) and was leaving an hour later than we thought it would be. As we stood around trying to decide if we still wanted to go, I started feeling worse and worse. We decided we were definitely going to go, so I bought my ticket (despite feeling worse and worse with every passing minute). There was no where to sit down in the train station, so we went across the street to McDonalds and sat in their cafe and I got tea and put on Voula's sweatshirt to combat the chills I was starting to suffer. I felt a little better after that, but I started considering refunding my ticket. No. I was going to Eger and nothing was going to stop me.

The train trip was lovely and pleasant. Our train stopped in several small country towns on the way; it was refreshing to see a landscape that wasn't Budapest for the first time in a month. I spent most of the train trip reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being and sleeping. I took lots of pictures of the countryside, and felt generally better. Then we finally arrived in Eger and as soon as I stood up I started feeling poor again. I almost considered taking the next train home but decided that now that I was here I should enjoy myself. We went to lunch first and I had no appetite so I sat in the cafe with them with a ginger ale and took an Ibuprofen Mandy had. Once that hit my system I started feeling much better but I was still feeling generally bad and gross.

We spent the day wandering around, me feeling like poo but trying not to bring everyone else down, and exploring the town and the castle. It was quite beautiful and I wish I'd been able to enjoy it more. All I wanted to do this entire day was lay down and sleep under lots of blankets and drink lots and lots of water. I spent the entire day looking at my watch, counting down until it was time to take the train home. My chills got worse while we were waiting in the train station for our train home. I sat there in my sweater, Voula's sweatshirt, gloves and my scarf, shivering, while everyone else sat in the pleasant 65-ish degree weather.

The train ride home was not nearly as pleasant as the ride there; I was shivering violently for much of the trip. I finished my book, napped and spent the rest of the time laying there feeling miserable.

As soon as I got home, with chills, a throbbing headache and general feeling of crappyness, I called Rob and cried for a good while. Then I fell asleep. For 12 hours. When I woke up, Éva was very luckily home. I told her I was sick and she bustled off to find her mercury armpit thermometer, then hustled me back into my bedroom. I'm not sure what my fever was at that point, but by the end of the day it had been up to over 102˚F and then back down to just over 100. I spent that day in bed, eating small things, drinking lots of tea, with my head and feet covered in cold cloths. "This isn't so bad," I thought to myself, "for my first fever in something like 7 years." But then that night the diarrhea started.

Warning: I talk about poop and my emotions quite honestly a lot from here on out. If you don't want to read about poop, scroll down to where I say "No more poop and emotions."

The next morning, Monday, I was awoken by stomach cramps and more diarrhea. I almost didn't bother telling Éva, because I didn't know how to tell her. But then I thought "Maybe this is important... I'll look it up in the dictionary." Hasmenés. I heard that word a lot for the next couple days. I got put back in bed and given charcoal. And more charcoal. And more. Charcoal tablets. First caplets, then solid mini briquettes the size of regular pills. And dark chocolate. All supposed remedies of diarrhea that seemed to have no effect. The second day of being sick in bed was far less fun than the first day. I spent the whole day pooping. Plus my fever was still going relatively strong (not quite as strong by the end of the day). She told me she would take me to the doctor the next day. I got scared, then, at the thought of being so sick in a foreign country, and what if there was really something wrong with me? This whole time I was also stressing about my classes, that were far harder than I ever could have imagined back in the states. I started hoping that maybe there was something relatively serious (but not life threatening) wrong with me, so I could have a reason to go home without being a coward.

When I woke up Tuesday there was still diarrhea, but less, and my temperature was miraculously normal. I started thinking about going back to school and the thought was quite nice. Missing class on the second week of school is no way to start the semester, I have to say. We decided the doctor wouldn't be necessary. I even got out of the house! Éva walked with me across the street to buy crackers and a phone card. Then she checked my temperature again just before I went to bed and it had crept back up to the 100˚ range. She gave me Rubophen (Tylenol) and told me there would definitely be doctor tomorrow.

Wednesday morning I woke up early with a 101˚ fever, which I think was just due to dehydration. Éva didn't think so. She put me in a freezing bath at 6 in the morning to bring down my relatively lowgrade fever. I was not pleased. I was also not pleased at being naked in front of my host mother; I don't care if she used to be a nurse (she was, for 35 years). At 8 we went to the doctor. It was honestly one of the most frightening experiences of my life. Éva told me the doctor spoke English, but the only English she said to me was "do you have a headache?", "do you have any medical allergies?" and "take two tablets in the morning and two in the evening". I was prescribed medication. I wasn't told what they were or even what they treated. On top of that, Éva tried to break in the door while I was using the bathroom in the waiting room to check to see if I had more diarrhea, and pulled down my pants for me while I was on the examining table in the doctor's office. I know she used to be a nurse and I know she was worried about me... but this was getting a little out of hand.

I came home from the doctor and once Éva had left for the day (she spends most of her afternoons at her daughter's house with her grandsons) I called Rob and cried more. Then I slept for the afternoon and called my parents in the evening, crying more. Through Rob, I found out what was wrong with me; the medicine I was prescribed is used to treat traveler's diarrhea. This was confirmed later when I spoke with Éva's (English speaking) daughter on the phone, who relayed from Éva that the doctor thought I had an infection in my belly. Good to know, 5 hours later. Once I got home from the doctor's I was feeling much better physically (though sort of in shambles emotionally). I asked Éva if I could go to school tomorrow and she said no, no, definitely not. I asked her if I could at least go to the Internet Café tomorrow and she said maybe. This gave me a glimmer of hope, since I had had very little contact with the outside world besides phone calls to my parents and Rob since I had gotten sick. She came in later and told me (roughly) "Ok, you and I will go to the Internet Café for one hour tomorrow for breakfast". That was the last straw. I'm 21 years old, I am fully capable of taking care of myself, and when I signed up to live with a host family I did not sign up to be 12 years old again. I called Anna, the student coordinator, to intervene. With Anna's finagling, I was granted permission to go to school the next day as long as I didn't have a fever when I woke up and Sarah accompanied me to school. YES.

To assure that I wouldn't have a fever, the night before I set my alarm for an hour before I was getting up so I could take a Rubophen and drink half a Nalgene of water to guarantee a normal temperature. It did the trick.

My recovery has been going well. My appetite began to return on Friday, the diarrhea is slowly going away, my fever is all gone and my antibiotics have been used up. I've almost finished playing catch-up in the classes I missed and have decided to drop Combinatorics 2 for my own sanity. I realized that hoping I had appendicitis so I could go home early was not a good sign at all, and my workload was probably too much.

NO MORE POOP AND EMOTIONS.


I spent this weekend with friends, doing lots and lots of homework. I spent most of Saturday working on Graph Theory in the internet cafe with Voula, then Saturday night I had dinner with Sarah, Éva and Éva's daughter, Erika (I've met her other daughter, Monika, before, but this is the first time Sarah or I had met Erika), then worked on more homework. Sunday I went over to the boys' in the afternoon and hung out there working on more Abstract. Last night Mad and Bok Choy had a "classy sandwich party" at their apartment, since they have a sandwich press (they decided that sandwich presses make classy sandwiches). I wore my little black dress and heels, (most everyone else dressed up too) and ate a peanut butter, nutella and banana sandwich, and a garlic, lettuce, tomato, trappista and onion sandwich. Delicious times were had by all!

And I know that the foam on the breaking waves is as white as household bleach.

As of the day after tomorrow, I will have been vacated from the United States for a month. A MONTH. It feels like I can't have been here that long, but I feel like I already know the city so well that I must have been here for months.

I've had three days of class now, and have experienced at least one class period of every class I'm planning on taking. I now provide you with a detailed account of my first impressions of these classes.

• Introduction to Abstract Algebra: This class is only going to meet for two hours and fifteen minutes a week. This sounds short, but it's pretty usual*. The difference between this class and others is that this one doesn't have scheduled "office time" for us to ask questions. So far all we've really done is go over set notation, which I learned back in Discrete. That's okay, a review is always good. The prof of this class is Jewish, so we have today off because it's Rosh Hashanah. I'll know more about this class once we meet again, since we really didn't cover any new material on the first day of class.

• Number Theory: This class has met twice now and I'm still not quite sure what's going on. More review of Discrete here, proving the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic was the big activity of yesterday morning's class. That seems to be how most of these classes are going, honestly. I'm guessing there'll be this one or two day review of what I learned in Discrete or whatever, and then things will pick up after that. There are two sections of Number Theory being taught here, at the same time, with identical syllabi. (Blogger doesn't like the word "syllabi". It says it's misspelled. No. It just looks funny, Blogger.) Of the two professors teaching it, one is a well known, well loved man named Csaba Szábo. The other professor is "That Other Guy", in a matter of speaking. On the first day of class, everyone went to Csaba's classroom, and no one went into "That Other Guy"'s classroom. There were about 20 of us sitting there when Csaba and a dejected looking TOG came into the room and said that half of us had to go with TOG into his room because there were enough of us to have two sections of the course. (If there had been 15 or less of us, they would have condensed it into one section). A few of us felt so sorry for TOG that we joined him, all the while being assured by Csaba and TOG that we could always switch classes later. Despite being sort of shy and not nearly as dynamic as Csaba, TOG seems like a nice professor, who writes notes on the board and knows his stuff. (His handwriting is illegible, but I think I'll be able to decipher it fully in another week).

• Combinatorics 2: I think I'm definitely going to like this course. Of all the classes I've seen this week, I think this is the only one I've learned something new in. We started talking about hypergraphs, which we're going to be learning about in Graph Theory later on. This is also the only class I've been assigned homework in. The professor is going to be assigning one or two problems and extra credit problems a day, then collecting them every few weeks. The extra problem he assigned on Tuesday definitely had me thinking: There are 70 students. For any two students A and B, how many languages must there be so that A knows a language that B does not? Should be a fun class.

• Graph Theory: More Discrete review here. And a packed class. Half of the people from my language class are in this class. The prof's kind of confusing, but his accent's pretty easy to understand. I might end up auditing this class, so who knows. The prof kind of freaked us out when he told us we really didn't need the textbook, that we'd only be using about 15% of it for class, but he was trying to require us to buy it just because it was a "good book to have on our shelves for later". Whatevers. I'll probably end up buying it anyways, just because I have a feeling it will help me.

• Intermediate Hungarian: There are two sections of this class being taught, one on Monday afternoons and one on Tuesday afternoons. The one on Monday is taught by Erika, the woman who taught my intro class at Babilon, and Tuesday's is taught by her son, Ádám. I decided to try taking Tuesday's class, for a change of pace.. and I'm not sure that was a change of pace I really needed. The class seemed too informal, not enough emphasis being placed on learning, just on doing. Does that make sense? Probably not. I'm going to check out Erika's class on Monday and see how that goes. That might be the class I end up in, but that would mean buying another textbook (Ádám wasn't going to require us to buy the book). We'll see on that one.

Yesterday after classes got out Mihály, Voula and I walked up to the Citadel. We crossed the bridge you can see in the picture and then walked up the stairs that zigzag their way up that hill. The Citadel is up by that statue you can see just left of center. The walk was quite wonderful, and much quicker than I would have expected. It would have been even more wonderful had I been wearing sneakers, not my DMs. We spent about 15 minutes walking around up there, enjoying the view and lamenting the fact that none of us had brought a camera, then walked back down and went back to Mihály's. We'll go back, I'll bring my camera and I will post all kinds of pictures, just you wait!

Today I came to school, but I'm not sure why, since I didn't have class. I wanted to use the internet and buy books, but no one's online at noon my time (it's three in the morning PST, for god's sake!) and the office that's selling the books isn't open today. Well... poo. I guess I'll just sit here updating my blog for a couple hours. And then... who knows what the rest of the day will bring? Who am I kidding, I'll probably end up at Mihály and Bruce's until nine or so, then go home and go to bed. Maybe somewhere in there I'll go to a café and sit and read the Unbearable Lightness of Being for a while (I just started on Sunday and I'm over halfway through... what a fantastic book so far!), make a formal copy of the Combinatorics problems I've done so far, and fill out my temporary residence permit form. And I should call my dad once 5 or 6 pm rolls around. And of course I will talk to Rob!






*A quick explanation of the classes here: classes tend to start at 15 minutes after the hour and go until the next hour, get a 15 minute break, then end at the next hour. So they are in a 2 hour block, but we are only in class for an hour and a half of it. Classes tend to meet twice a week, and the second 45 minute period on second day there is "office time" instead of instruction where students can ask questions.

Scotty never met a bike that he didn't want to ride.

Last night we went back to the castle. When you go at night it doesn't cost anything to go up on the wall.





Today we (me, Chelsey, Mad and Charlie) took the HÉV train into a previously unseen part of Buda to try to go to the Buda caves (sorry, I can't seem to find a link right now). But then Charlie made 3 wrong turns on the way there, then we decided we were hungry. So instead we got pizza, got croissants, then took the HÉV train back into the city and went to St. Istvan's Basilica.


Some kitties we saw while in search of food in the Buda suburbs. They're kissing!!



Me, Mad, and our GINORMOUS chocolate croissants. YUM.



They have one of those Cow Art exhibitions going on in downtown Pest right now, near Deák tér. This is the RubiCow. It made me think of Rob. I actually think the World Rubik's Cube competition is going on now or soon right here in Budapest. I lied. It's next month.



St. Istvan's Basilica. We climbed to the top of that center dome for the low price of 500ft. Absolutely worth it. And if I hadn't been so freaked out of the height and the high speed winds, it would have been even cooler.



The dome stairs looking down from around the middle. After this point they became a true spiral staircase.



The view from the top. Amazing.



Charlie, Mad, Me and Chelsey at the top. A nice tourist man offered to take our picture. A wind gust picked up just as he took the picture and my hat almost flew off my head. I jerked awkwardly to keep it on my head and it's a wonder the picture turned out so nicely!



Candles in St. Istvan's.



The sanctuary.



A little girl I saw rollerblading in the square in front of St. Istvan's. Eeee!






This morning when I got up I saw my host mother for the first time in DAYS. I was sleeping in almost every day of the 4 day weekend (I'd gotten pretty severely sleep deprived during the language school) and Éva would always be gone by the time I woke up, off to pick grapes or babysit her grandson, Zoli. If you then consider that while I make it home before midnight every night, she tends to be a-bed by then, you will see how it is possible I haven't seen her much in the last couple of days. I sadly do not have the hopping social life she imagines (as she put it, "Jessica itt, Jessica ott!" which means "Jessica here, Jessica there!")(I would also like to amend that the name Jessie does not seem to exist in Hungary, so I've stopped correcting the Hungarian women who call me Jessica). No, I just hang out at the same apartment with the same friends nearly every day... Not that there's anything wrong with that! I like my friends! And I like their wireless internet a whole lot, too!

Tonight, we hung out at the boy's apartment and Voula, Casey and Mihály made macaroni and cheese. Tomorrow morning classes start.. I'm a little nervous. I only have one class tomorrow; Abstract Algebra. I don't even know what to expect, but almost everyone I've talked to who's already taken it say that they love it. Plus Eva's in the class, so I'll have a friend there!



I would also like to state that Blogger is annoying me right now and it took me about 4 hours to write that last blog post because the formatting wasn't turning out how I wanted it to be.

Miért az aquariumban vagy?

Our last activity of the language school was a skit based around the theme "An American Student in Budapest". Ours was the tragic tale of one man's search for Absinthe and dental floss. (Sorry mom, I know this video is going to be a pain for you to view, but I think it's really just one more reason you should probably ditch dial-up)


Wednesday night was celebration time: a group of us went out to Indian food at a place called Karma Sutra. The waiters spoke English, they agreed to serve us all csap víz (tap water) which is not as common as you'd think, and I paid around 3000 ft for my whole dinner, which is about $15 American. And that was for a dish with meat in it (chicken tikka masala, yumm), a side order of naan, and tip. And this place was pretty schmancy, so I was definitely felt like I got my money's worth. The trippy part of the evening came when I heard something familiar coming out of the restaurant's speakers... and realized it was Sympathique by Pink Martini. Several of us went back over to Voula's after dinner to watch 10 Things I Hate About You.



On Thursday, Voula, her roommate and I made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies! We accidentally used their landlady's cookie making supplies that she's brought back from the states. We gave her cookies and I wrote down my recipe for her, so hopefully that evens out my karma. They turned out really good, even though we didn't have any vanilla.



These were the crappy Indonesian batteries I bought. Do not buy them. Buy a brand you know and trust. I spent way too much just so I could get Energizers. So batteries are expensive in Hungary. I think that means you should send me batteries, because my battery charger broke when I plugged it into my adapter.



Today we went to the Buda castle, which is right next to my apartment. Lots of touristy stuff, lots of people around (there's some sort of wine festival going on there this weekend).



The Fisherman's Bastion, from near the castle.



A view of the Parliament building from the castle wall



Mad, Eva and I in front of a carved wall.



When I saw the Fisherman's Bastion today I realized that I'd been there before. It was such an intense wave of "whoa" (yes, a wave of whoa) and nostalgia for HVCC. We came here on the Eastern Europe tour with chamber choir. See? (note the little Jessie and Micaela in the front row!!)



We went into a marzipan shop. These were the little animals that were for sale.



Mad, Eva and I each bought one marzipan chocolate. Eva got one that was layered chocolate, marzipan and hazelnut. Mad's was vanilla marzipan dipped in chocolate. Mine was a sour cherry in cognac surrounded by marzipan and dipped in chocolate. Oh, the decadence!



We went exploring and found parts of the castle grounds that weren't well kept and weren't full of tourists.



Mad sitting by the staircase that we hoped would take us on an adventure, but actually just took us up to the main street full of tourists.



From the middle of the staircase, looking back down.



As we left I took this picture of the Fisherman's bastion with the Parliament building in the background. I love Budapest!


Tonight we're going to dinner at a friend's house who is making Mexican food. I'm hoping for enchiladas.

And math starts the day after tomorrow! Hooray! What we actually came here for! That day, September 10th, is also Rob's birthday. 2 weeks ago I sent him a package from Hungary which has arrived in Vancouver, he just has to pick it up from the post office... I won't let him open it until Monday, though!


One final thing is that I've figured out my schedule! I've decided that I'm going to try taking Combinatorics 2 along with Abstract 1, Number Theory, Graph Theory and Intermediate Hungarian. If I can pull that off, I won't have to take a summer class and can graduate on time. And that would be pretty fantastic.
My schedule:

Celebration! It's the last day of Hungarian Language Class!

I had a conversation with my host mother this morning! In Hungarian! She said something about class this week. "Iskola ma, de nem iskola holnap. És hétfö iskola mathematika!" (Translation: school today, but no school tomorrow. And math school on Monday!) HECK YES I'M LEARNING HUNGARIAN! Despite how pointless language class has been...

But today is the last day of language class! And we have BSM orientation on Friday, so we'll get to meet all the people in the program who didn't take the language school. We'll learn when the classes are being offered, so.. which classes we can actually take.

I am now leaning towards these classes:

• Graph Theory
• Intro to Abstract Algebra
• Number Theory
• (Maybe) Conjecture and Proof
• Intermediate Hungarian

Woop!

Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Last night a couple of boys from the program hosted an absinthe party. No green fairies sighted, but a nice headache this morning. We researched absinthe before we left and discovered that it really has no hallucinogenic properties to speak of... but the forbidden will always fascinate us, so the green we did drink!

I'm finding more and more that Budapest has become like a giant residential college campus. Some people live in central Pest, which is like Platt-Howard: the most desirable, the most centrally located to everything. Buda is like Copeland, close to everything, but far enough away and confusing enough that people rarely come visit. There are others who live further away, like they live in upper Forest. Having their own fun and venturing to other dorms instead of expecting people to come visit them. And we all go zooming around the city on the metro and become better and better friends. It's like freshman year all over again!

Now I'm off to go to a supposed communist pizza parlor in the Buda hills with some friends.

Also a reminder to myself: do not get knockoff batteries from Indonesia. You will have wasted 500 ft just for your camera display to say "change the batteries" before shutting itself off.